A couple of blogs ago, I wrote about the common problem of red-eye and how to avoid it.The bottom line was, don’t use the on-camera flash if you can help it.I looked through the photos I shot this year with flash and realized that while I got some decent portraits- it was as much by luck as it was by skill.

It made me acknowledge that I really have only a basic set of skills with my remote lighting tools.So 2013, assuming we survive Friday’s Mayan apocalypse, will be the year that I really learn off camera lighting.There are two main sources I plan to rely on to accomplish this task—Kelby Training and the magic of Joe McNally, which we have plugged before and a Website/blog/cult called “STROBIST® . http://strobist.blogspot.com/2006/02/welcome-to-strobist.html

David Hobby who runs the organization is fairly local—he lives up in Baltimore.He lives, breathes, writes and shoots lighting.He has created a self-help course entitled“Lighting 101, which goes from the very basics of flash terminology to a series of more complex assignments.Bes of all, the entire content is free.I’m going to work my way through it, over the next few months and hopefully, will be able to get results like this all the time, instead of, “Oh wow, I shot that?Joe McNally says “Light is the language of photography, we must learn to see it and shape it”.